Programmer Profile: Smithsonian’s David Royle

February 14, 2011 World Screen

PREMIUM: Co-productions are "vital" to the programming mix at Smithsonian Channel, according to David Royle, the executive VP of programming and production at the U.S. factual network.

The Smithsonian Institution is an American treasure. As the world’s largest museum complex, with 19 museums, nine international research centers and 168 million artifacts, it covers an endless range from history and art to space and technology, even pop culture. The Smithsonian Channel, a joint venture between the Institution and Showtime Networks, taps into this rich selection of subject matter to craft entertaining and informative programming. David Royle tells us how.

WS: The Smithsonian Channel launched in 2007 and has been growing well. To what do you attribute its growth?
ROYLE: I think people actually feel a very emotional connection to the Smithsonian and it’s not just a place, the Smithsonian brand is incredibly powerful. For a lot of Americans, and for people worldwide, it stands for real credibility, real depth, real thoughtfulness and exploration as well. So it’s a very exciting brand to be taking to television.
 
Then, of course, the other thing that helped us enormously was that we came in at the front of HD. From day one, we felt that producing television that was of the top-quality level, full HD, 5.1 surround sound was the way to go and fitted the quality the brand bought with it.
 
Finally, I would say that the Smithsonian Channel is this interesting marriage between the Smithsonian and Showtime, which is part of CBS. From the Smithsonian, you get great DNA: you’ve got the credibility, the integrity and everything that the Smithsonian stands for, and the great stories that exist there. And then you have the entertaining side that Showtime and CBS bring to it. It’s no good doing programs if you don’t bring an audience to the door. And we set out to do programming that is truly entertaining, but also has credibility and is therefore informative.
 
WS: How do you work with the Smithsonian Institution in creating your programming?
ROYLE: We work really closely with it. What people don’t always realize is just how big the Institution is. It’s 19 separate museums, and it includes American History, Natural History, the National Zoo, a research station down in Panama, the Hirshhorn [Museum and Sculpture Garden]. It’s this fantastic treasure trove of artifacts and, from our point of view, a treasure trove of stories. So, we work very closely with the curators and the scientists around the museums, and they put a certain number of story ideas to us every year and we also look for stories that we just think are incredibly compelling.
 
I’ll give you a couple of examples. One of our big films last year was Mystery of the Hope Diamond. This was a film that the Natural History Museum was very keen for us to make because the Hope Diamond is one of those objects that is just magical and enormously compelling to people. It rivals the Mona Lisa at the Louvre every year as the most visited [art object]. In fact, there is an unspoken competition that takes place between the Louvre and the Smithsonian as to which object attracts the most visitors. The Hope Diamond has this great curse story. The Smithsonian has been doing ongoing science under the leadership of the curator Jeff Post and it was the 50th anniversary of it being given to the Smithsonian, so we made a large film about it. And, it combined all the best that we stand for: history, great science, a mystery and then a final destination at the Smithsonian.
 
WS: What is your original programming strategy?
ROYLE: What we’re trying to do is take the interests of the Smithsonian out of the museums and bring them across America and throughout the world. And, as I said, the Smithsonian covers a range of subjects, so we want our programming strategy to reflect those interests. We’re broader than some of the other nonfiction channels. We cover history, art and music, all the areas the Smithsonian has an interest in, along with things like air and space—the world’s largest air and space museum is at the Smithsonian—which gives us an enormously, wonderfully rich palette to work off.
 
And, at the same time all our programs have to be as entertaining as they are informative. They’re story driven. They have to have a strong, rich visual quality to them. And, the sweet spot for us, in many situations, is if a story has a good element of Americana. It’s not critical, it’s not the only thing we do—after all, the Smithsonian’s interests are broader than just America, you have the Freer and Sackler, which concentrates on Asian art, history, culture—but we do see ourselves as American storytellers telling American stories.
 
WS: Do you look to the international markets for programming when developing or acquiring programming?
ROYLE: Yes. We do an enormous amount of co-productions. We did Mystery of the Hope Diamond with Channel 4 in the U.K. and with NHK in Japan. The co-production model is absolutely vital to the way we’re building this channel and it’s a very natural model for us. We, for instance, have an ongoing series called The Real Story, which takes very popular movies like Escape from Alcatraz or The Exorcist or Titanic, for example, and it tells the true historical story behind those movies. We’ve been doing that with Channel 5 and Blink Films out of London for the last three years and we’ve just now completed our first 15 episodes. And that’s been a very successful series for us, but also for British television and also for Canadian television—so, it’s a nice example of a co-production partnership.
 
WS: Are there any upcoming shows that you would like to mention?
ROYLE: There are a number of very exciting new programs that we have coming up this year, and one of them is called Born Fighting. That is going to be launched in April and it is probably the first program that’s presented by a sitting U.S. Senator. It’s Senator Jim Webb and it’s a program that looks at the role of the Scots-Irish in forming the American psyche and their contribution to American culture. That is a co-production and, for us, it’s a great example of how we’re working with international producers because we’ve done that with Scottish television and with Ulster Television.
 
We are going to be airing again our Aerial America series—we’re filming all of America from the air in HD—it’s a fantastically large project. We’ve now completed more than the first dozen states. People find it absolutely enthralling to see America from a different perspective.
 
And then we’re working with wildlife filmmakers, too. We have a fantastic film called Diving with Crocs, which is what it sounds like. It’s set in the Okavango Swamps and it involves a field biologist, a naturalist, who decides it’s not enough to understand the life of Nile crocodiles from above water, you have to get down under and follow them into their lairs. It’s a very exciting, a very extraordinary piece of work.
 
WS: The Smithsonian is such a source of knowledge and history. What are you doing for children to get them excited about the important topics?
ROYLE: Yes. If the Smithsonian can’t do something for children, I don’t know who can. We do see ourselves as a family channel, and we’ve done a number of children’s programs, mainly in the area of science and natural history. We have a lovely program called Critter Quest, which involves teaching children how to go into their backyards and find projects they can do with animals and with plants, and that’s been very successful for us. We’ve done stories set in our zoos, but we also have a science series called SciQ and a fun program called Smithsonian’s Weirdest, which is just as it sounds. It’s full of things like Soap Man, which is a man mummified in soap, or the giant squid at the Smithsonian. It’s a really fun, entertaining children’s programming.
 
We feel that a lot of our historical programming is actually very interesting to young people as well, and I can see us doing more in that area in the future. We want to be a channel that parents know that they can come to with their kids and feel that they’re going to be entertained and informed and it is a fairly safe place for them to be. I don’t think there are many places like that on television today.
 
WS: You’ve been in the factual television business for a long time. In today’s multichannel world, is the future of the documentary a healthy one, or is it an endangered species?
ROYLE: Oh, no, this is not an endangered species in my opinion. It is totally reinventing itself. The evolution of the documentary goes at a colossal pace and one of the things that we’re very conscious of is, you can’t just think of the documentary itself, you’ve also got to think of the multimedia environment. And, we’re on Apple TV now. We have a terrific iPhone app, which is very, very popular. I suspect we’ll be on the iPad before you know it. Everything we look at, we look at in terms of multimedia applications and that is key to what filmmakers have to do. You have to start talking about those projects right up front, you can’t leave it to the last minute. So, multimedia is part if it, but I also think that there is always a human hunger to understand the world and everything that’s in it. At the Smithsonian, part of our job is the diffusion of knowledge and I think the hunger exists out there in the audience.
 
My own feeling is that the documentary has evolved in many areas and it has become very exciting in the way it’s presented; but it has also become detached at times from real reality. You’re seeing some terrific, reality-type shows, but they’re often created. We want to present programming that is rooted in actual life. That’s part of what we do. We want to capture the drama, the excitement, the entertaining side of life, but we want it to be true to what goes on.

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